Tag: this american life

“I am happy that the truth prevails, I am glad that Mike Daisey’s lies were exposed. But I don’t think that the reports about this have gone far enough to find out what exactly is the truth. People will have the impression that Foxconn is a bad company, so I hope they will come and find out for themselves.”

“Mike Daisey, the off-Broadway performer who admitted that he made up parts of his one-man show about Apple products being made in Chinese sweatshops, has cut questionable sections from the monologue and added a prologue explaining the controversy.

Oskar Eustis, artistic director of The Public Theater, where the monologue is being performed, said Saturday that Daisey has ‘eliminated anything he doesn’t feel he can stand behind’ from the show and added a section at the beginning in which he addresses the questions raised by critics.”

“In the theater, our job is to create fictions that reveal truth– that’s what a storyteller does, that’s what a dramatist does. THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS reveals, as Mike’s other monologues have, human truths in story form.

In this work, Mike uses a story to frame and lead debate about an important issue in a deeply compelling way. He has illuminated how our actions affect people half-a-world away and, in doing so, has spurred action to address a troubling situation. This is a powerful work of art and exactly the kind of storytelling that The Public Theater has supported, and will continue to support in the future.

Mike is an artist, not a journalist. Nevertheless, we wish he had been more precise with us and our audiences about what was and wasn’t his personal experience in the piece.”

Great fiction does indeed offer insight, discussion and introspection on real issues. That’s not the problem here. The problem is that Daisey knowingly let his audience assume he was sharing factual, first-hand experiences.

I’d love to know if Daisey still tells the story about meeting underage workers, after admitting on This American Life that he never did. Or if he describes a man who suffered hexane poisoning, after admitting that it never happened.

There’s no controversy at all. Daisey lied to This American Life, CBS Sunday Morning and The New York Times. He also let his audience believe he was sharing factual, first-hand experiences. He was not.

“During fact checking before the broadcast of Daisey’s story, This American Life staffers asked Daisey for this interpreter’s contact information. Daisey told them her real name was Anna, not Cathy as he says in his monologue, and he said that the cell phone number he had for her didn’t work any more. He said he had no way to reach her.”

“Daisey went to Shenzhen. Foxconn wouldn’t let him in, so he stood outside the main gate with his translator, talking to workers at shift change. ‘In my first two hours of my first day at that gate, I met workers who are 14 years old,’ Daisey said. ‘I met workers who were 13 years old. I met workers who were 12. Do you really think Apple doesn’t know?'”

“I have traveled to southern China and interviewed workers employed in the production of electronics. I spoke with a man whose right hand was permanently curled into a claw from being smashed in a metal press at Foxconn, where he worked assembling Apple laptops and iPads. I showed him my iPad, and he gasped because he’d never seen one turned on.”

Never happened.

The problem isn’t that Daisey bent the truth in the name of entertainment during his stage show (which he recently released under an open license). It’s that he blatantly and knowingly lied to the New York Times, CBS Sunday Morning and This American Life. That’s not “a tool of theatre,” Mike. That’s called lying.

“Daisey lied to me and to This American Life producer Brian Reed during the fact checking we did on the story, before it was broadcast. That doesn’t excuse the fact that we never should’ve put this on the air. In the end, this was our mistake.”

Wow. “Daisey” is Mike Daisey, whose one-man show, “The Agony And Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” describes the time he spent at Foxconn, posing as an American industrialist. 2 This American Life — produced by WBEZ in Chicago and distributed by Public Public International — aired a portion of Daisey’s monolog. That episode, “Mr. Daisey And The Apple Factory,” was the show’s most popular to date. An entire subsequent episode has been dedicated to the retraction.

“What I do is not journalism. The tools of the theater are not the same as the tools of journalism. For this reason, I regret that I allowed THIS AMERICAN LIFE to air an excerpt from my monologue. THIS AMERICAN LIFE is essentially a journalistic ­- not a theatrical ­- enterprise, and as such it operates under a different set of rules and expectations.”

I’m floored by this. “The tools of the theater are not the same as the tools of journalism.” Really, Mike? Is lying to NPR fact-checkers a “tool of theatre?”

If I make shit up while standing on a stage, and tell you it’s fact, or knowingly permit you to assume its fact, it’s OK. Because I’m standing on a stage. Theatre!